Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Mainers Still Against Someone

When we asked where the yipping dogs of torment will go, we already had a good idea that most Mainers were tired of legally slapping homosexuals around.

Yet, the howling started again only hours after the vote upholding the state's anti-discrimination law. The ever self-righteous minister Sandy Williams promised a DoMA amendment. Also, Mike I'm-not-a-minister-but-I-play-one-on-the-Internet Heath slimed his way to an even less credible than usual scare prediction of ensuing teen suicide.

One must admire even the clumsiest of jesters for their efforts to entertain.

Williams, head of the Coalition for Marriage (warning: Website an unofficial candidate for least useful and ugliest in the state), was disappointed that his efforts to permit everyone to discriminate freely against gays lost. His church, as all religious institutions, is exempt and can be as bigoted and hateful as they'd like, short of physical violence. He'd like everyone to experience such privilege.

Now, as he put it, "(W)e remain committed to marriage as the beautiful and loving union between a man and a woman." His related solution is to force everyone to obey his religious views as a matter of law. The obvious answer is to go beyond the state law defining marriage that way, beyond the limit in the gay-rights wording saying that it in no way permits any form of gay unions, and to enshire his view in the state's constitution.

Nice guy, eh?

The Jester in Chief, Mr. Heath of the Christian Civic League of Maine, pouted and shrieked in his blog-like object. He excused his failure to strip homosexuals of basic legal rights against discrimination. You see, it was only a matter of money and certainly not his fault. Business owners "told us then that they couldn't contribute to the campaign. They were afraid of reprisals."

Now the fact that Maine Won't Discriminate got the supporters, the contributions, and the votes seems to have no meaning to him. Surely it couldn't be because they were in the right and people recognized it.

Disclosure: We donated to Maine Won't Discriminate.

So now, Heath claims his "biggest concern" is the poor children who will suffer because people can't discriminate against gays in housing, employment, lending, education and lodging. The misguided liberal educators will now tell kids "that all their sexual urges are legitimate and moral. They sincerely believe that this will head off youth suicides. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. If we start teaching our children to go against nature we are going to reap the whirlwind socially, morally and culturally."

We can't avoid the feeling that these characters are about keeping their Fabulous Fright and Spite Circus in business. Perhaps both will start shifting their fund-raising to efforts at passing that state amendment. It worked in Texas. If they can get the dwindling anachronisms fired up about that, they can keep the dirty dollars flowing.

As the expression goes, God help them. We used to think that about Maine, but Maine seems to be able to take care of itself.